Crows may make lightning-fast decisions, sometimes twice as fast as humans, study hints

Recent research published in the journal Science suggests that crows may be capable of making lightning-fast decisions, sometimes twice as quickly as humans. In a study involving two carrion crows, researchers found that the birds could distinguish the direction of moving dots on a screen in an average of 235 milliseconds, which is less than a quarter of a second.

This is significantly faster than the six seconds it takes humans to make similar decisions. The crows were highly accurate and their brain activity during decision-making resembled that seen in primates and humans. The researchers trained the crows to complete a visual task on a touchscreen, where they had to determine the predominant direction of moving dots and peck the corresponding target to earn a reward.

The crows performed better when the movement of dots was clear and they maintained high accuracy even when only a small percentage of dots moved together. To understand how the birds made these quick decisions, researchers recorded activity from 248 neurons in the nidopallium caudolaterale (NCL) region of the bird brain, which is functionally comparable to the prefrontal cortex in humans and primates.

The findings indicate that a brain does not necessarily need a mammalian neocortex to perform sophisticated computations. The researchers suggest that the crows' fast decision-making may be a result of the demands of their daily lives, such as navigating complex environments and making rapid decisions for survival. However, more research is needed to confirm these results and explore the broader implications for our understanding of intelligence across different species.